If your company operates a website or blog that hosts user-generated content, you’ll want to read this post carefully. We’re ringing the alarm bell on an important new U.S. copyright law development that, if ignored, could significantly increase your company’s potential liability exposure in connection with user-generated content. If your company hosts user-generated content, such… Continue Reading

We’re in the midst of a seismic shift in how companies interact with user-generated content (UGC). For years, companies were happy simply to host UGC on their websites, blogs and social media pages and reap the resulting boost to their traffic numbers. And U.S. law—in the form of Section 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright… Continue Reading

The latest issue of our Socially Aware newsletter is now available here. In this issue of Socially Aware, our Burton Award winning guide to the law and business of social media, we take a look at courts’ efforts to evaluate emoticons and emojis entered into evidence; we describe the novel way one court addressed whether counsel may conduct… Continue Reading

Recently, in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court provided substantial guidance in an unsettled area of law by holding that, when deciding whether to award attorneys’ fees under 17 U.S.C. §505, the Copyright Act’s fee-shifting provision, a court should give substantial weight to the objective reasonableness of the losing party’s… Continue Reading

Because content posted online can be accessed nearly anywhere, courts regularly face the issue of whether they have personal jurisdiction over a defendant who posted material to the web or a social media site. Recently, one New York federal court held that the mere fact, standing alone, that copyrighted material posted online was accessible in New… Continue Reading

The latest issue of our Socially Aware newsletter is now available here. In this issue of Socially Aware, our Burton Award-winning guide to the law and business of social media. In this edition, we offer tips for a successful—and legal—advertising campaign; we examine a New York State Appellate Division opinion significantly limiting a personal-injury-case defendant’s access to the… Continue Reading

In this election season, we hear a lot of complaints about laws stifling business innovation. And there is no doubt that some laws have this effect. But what about laws that spur innovation, that result in the creation of revolutionary new business models? Section 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the DMCA) is one such… Continue Reading

Companies love to use third-party content for free. In this era of belt-tightening and slashed marketing budgets, why pay to create photos and videos for advertising and other commercial uses when compelling photos and videos are readily available online for licensing for commercial use at no charge? Perhaps the most important source of such works… Continue Reading

The latest issue of our Socially Aware newsletter is now available here. In this issue of Socially Aware, our Burton Award-winning guide to the law and business of social media, we present a “grand unifying theory” of today’s leading technologies and the legal challenges these technologies raise; we discuss whether hashtags can be protected under trademark law; we explore the… Continue Reading

Pin pain. As a primarily visual social media platform whose self-described purpose is to help users bookmark and save “good stuff you find anywhere around the web,” Pinterest has raised copyright infringement questions since it became explosively popular in 2012. In many cases, copyright owners are happy to have their images “pinned” on the site,… Continue Reading

The explosive growth of social media has clients facing legal questions that didn’t even exist a few short years ago. Helping your clients navigate this muddled legal landscape will have them clicking “like” in no time. What’s in a Like? Not long ago, the word “like” was primarily a verb (and an interjection used by… Continue Reading

The latest issue of our Socially Aware newsletter is now available here. In this issue of Socially Aware, our Burton Award-winning guide to the law and business of social media, we discuss a recent decision in Virginia protecting the anonymity of Yelp users; we examine the FTC’s much anticipated report, “Internet of Things: Privacy & Security in a Connected World;”… Continue Reading

Boxing fans eagerly awaited the May 2, 2015, championship match between boxers Floyd Mayweather, Jr. and Manny Pacquiao. But the fight also drew the interest of those following online video apps Meerkat and Periscope. Launched at the end of February 2015, Meerkat is a livestreaming iPhone app that allows Twitter users to stream videos from… Continue Reading

Under section 512(f) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), copyright owners are liable for “any damages” stemming from knowingly false accusations of infringement that result in removal of the accused online material. Section 512(f) aims to deter abuse of the DMCA requirement that service providers process takedown requests from purported copyright owners, but such… Continue Reading

In 2012, DISH Network announced two novel product offerings that would result in considerable backlash from the four major broadcast television networks and set in motion a three-year, wide-ranging, multi-front battle with the networks. As the dust now begins to settle, the copyright litigation has resulted in important precedents that will help define the boundaries… Continue Reading

More than two decades have passed since internationally recognized copyright law expert and award-winning novelist Professor Paul Goldstein of Stanford Law School (and Of Counsel to Morrison & Foerster) published his landmark book, Copyright’s Highway: From Gutenberg to the Celestial Jukebox—a wide-ranging and insightful (not to mention entertaining!) examination of the past, present and future… Continue Reading

The latest issue of our Socially Aware newsletter is now available here. In this issue of Socially Aware, our Burton Award-winning guide to the law and business of social media, we look at several topics surrounding the proverbial online thumbs up, including the emerging legal status of Facebook likes and similar social media constructs; Facebook’s recent prohibition of the popular… Continue Reading

Earlier this year, Socially Aware noted a peculiar decision out of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals holding that an actress owns a copyright interest in her five-second performance in a film and thus could demand the removal of all copies of the film posted to YouTube. The actress, Cindy Lee Garcia, claims that she… Continue Reading

Introduction In June of this year, we sent out an alert about the anticipated new UK copyright infringement exceptions. These exceptions were to be introduced based on the recommendations of the Hargreaves Review. Surprisingly, some of the exceptions had been dramatically pulled from the legislative slate at the last minute. However, the UK government has… Continue Reading

The “selfie” is now so ubiquitous that the word is in the Oxford English Dictionary, you can use it in Scrabble and it has spawned a whole new lexicon. Selfies are no longer the preserve of teens and reality stars; you now have politicians, royalty and companies getting in on the act. Selfies can mean… Continue Reading

On 5 June 2014 the European Court of Justice (CJEU) published its decision in the “Meltwater” Case C-360/13, (Public Relations Consultations Association Ltd (PRCA) v Newspaper Licensing Agency Ltd (NLA) and Others). In a ruling that some have hailed as a victory for common sense, the CJEU declared that browsing freely accessible copyrighted material on… Continue Reading

In a closely watched case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today in a 6-3 decision that Aereo’s Internet streaming service engages in unauthorized public performances of broadcast television programs in violation of the Copyright Act, reversing the Second Circuit’s decision in American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. v. Aereo, Inc. (No. 13-461). In ruling against Aereo, the… Continue Reading

The safe harbor provisions in § 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) provide a mechanism that insulates online service providers from monetary damages for infringing materials posted or stored by their users. To receive this protection, service providers must designate an agent to receive notice of claims of infringement with the Copyright Office… Continue Reading

About Socially Aware

Social media sites are transforming not only the daily lives of consumers, but also how companies interact with consumers. Here at Morrison & Foerster, across all of our practice groups, we are seeing complex, cutting-edge legal issues arising out of social media. As with the Internet boom during the mid-to-late 1990s, social media is generating new legal questions at a far faster pace than the law’s ability to provide answers to such questions. In an effort to stay on top of these emerging issues, and to keep our clients and friends informed of new developments, Morrison & Foerster publishes this blog devoted to the law and business of social media.

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We are Morrison & Foerster — a global firm of exceptional credentials. Our clients include some of the largest financial institutions, investment banks, Fortune 100, technology and life science companies. We’ve been included on The American Lawyer’s A-List for 12 straight years, Chambers Global named MoFo its 2013 USA Law Firm of the Year, and Chambers USA named the firm both its 2013 Intellectual Property and Bankruptcy Firm of the Year. In addition, BTI named MoFo among its 2013 Brand Elite. Our lawyers are committed to achieving innovative and business-minded results for our clients, while preserving the differences that make us stronger.

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